The RMA and the Interagency: Knowledge and Speed vs. Ignorance and Sloth?

DAVID TUCKER

The Joint Staff knows why interagency coordination
does not occur. According to a Joint Staff memorandum, "in the past it
has been extremely difficult to achieve coordinated interdepartmental planning"
for two reasons: other agencies of the US government do not understand
"systematic planning procedures," and each agency has its own approach
to solving problems. The State Department, for example, values flexibility
and its ability to respond to daily changes in a situation more than it
values planning, while the CIA is reluctant to coordinate for security
reasons and the former US Information Agency held Defense and the CIA at
arm's length for fear that it would be seen as a mere dispenser of propaganda.
If we are to have interagency coordination, the memorandum warns, "these
inhibitions of other governmental agencies must in some way be overcome."[1]

Furthermore, the Joint Staff has been aware of the obstacles to interagency
coordination for a long time. The memorandum just quoted was written in
1961. This long-standing concern helps explain, no doubt, the worry expressed
when the military contemplates the future. A report on Army After Next
(AAN) experimentation comments that "the diversity of the interagency,
with each agency having its own culture, hierarchy, bias, misperceptions,
and unique perspectives, makes unity of effort difficult." These problems,
compounded by "low technical and procedural interoperability, and the absence
of a common vision," create "formidable obstacles" to interagency coordination.
Both Joint Vision 2010 and Joint Vision 2020 make similar
points about the interagency process, leading to a similar conclusion:
interagency coordination is hard to achieve.[2]

The military is worried about what has become known as "the interagency"
partly because of the demands that a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)
would place on the interagency process. If an RMA occurs in the years to
come, it will be led by advances in sensor, communication, and information
processing technology that will allow our forces to see and attack the
enemy throughout the depth and height of the battlespace. That the enemy
will see our forces almost as well as we see theirs will require that we
attack from dispersed or remote positions with stunning speed. Knowledge
and speed will allow us to achieve "the near simultaneous application of
combat power against key elements within the enemy's entire zone of operations."[3]
The result will be the disintegration of the enemy's forces. Such disintegration
is more likely to occur or to be more valuable strategically and politically
if we can enter the theater of operations before the enemy has established
himself fully or achieved his objectives. Such rapid strategic maneuver
may result in strategic preclusion, denying the enemy the operational opportunity
or objective he seeks. If we can demonstrate such a capability, we may
even deter conflict.

The stringent demands for coordination that an RMA will place on US
government agencies is most obvious at the strategic level. Preclusion
will require interagency decisionmaking that can coordinate a rapid response
to emerging problems, as well as keep pace with developments in the battlespace.
Quick, flexible interagency coordination will also be necessary at the
operational level. Rapid simultaneous engagement of the enemy will not
always result in the simultaneous cessation of all hostilities. Disintegration
may induce some of the enemy's forces to surrender, but others will fight
on in isolation as cohesive units, perhaps retreating to nearby urban areas,
while others transition to guerrilla warfare. The military, therefore,
will be conducting high-intensity operations in one spot, while in other
places it mops up, provides humanitarian assistance, takes care of refugees,
and implements the transition to a legitimate civilian authority, in these
latter cases working closely with other agencies. The traditional sequential
approach in which, in one general officer's words,[4] the political guys
hand off to the military guys and you "let the military guys do it, and
as soon as the military thing is over, immediately turn it back to the
political guys" is unlikely to work.

An RMA will increase the importance of interagency coordination for
other reasons as well. A force that can disintegrate its opposition will,
we hope, discourage enemy forces from taking the field. Our opponents,
therefore, will seek to attack us asymmetrically. An RMA will encourage
a trend that is emerging already: the likelihood of attacks on America.
The RMA quite possibly will join drugs, disasters, and terrorism through
mass casualties as reasons why the US military will increase its involvement
in contingency operations in support of domestic civil authorities.[5]
Success in such operations will require coordination with a host of agencies,
as well as state and local authorities. Our knowledge and the speed with
which we act may also encourage the use of another asymmetric strategy.
Discouraged from taking the field, our opponents may hide in urban areas.
In some cases, we may be able and willing to leave them there unmolested
or to make sure they do not escape while we take care of more important
priorities. Regardless, we will have to fight in the battlespace they choose.
Again, this may require that the military execute different military operations
(humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping, combat) simultaneously rather than
sequentially. Just like combat in the environment we prefer, combat in
urban areas will actually consist of a range of operations, most involving
interagency coordination at the operational level. Finally, although they
are seldom mentioned in discussions of the RMA, operations other than war
(OOTW) will continue after the revolution and will remain essentially interagency
operations. Since a growing number of US government agencies (currently
30) are operating overseas, a trend that does not seem likely to reverse,
the interagency aspects of future OOTW will be at least as difficult as
those we are conducting now.

The first conclusion reached when considering the RMA and the interagency
is that the operations an RMA will make possible and necessary will not
achieve their most potent form unless the interagency process can meet
the demands of revolutionized military forces. If it does not, we are likely
to get what we got in Panama: an operation dictated by gross failures to
coordinate among agencies, which destroyed efforts to oust Noriega without
force, followed by a post-operation transition to civilian control so bungled
by poor coordination that it almost undid the dearly bought benefits of
the military operation.[6] The future may be even worse than Panama suggests,
given the greater presence of civilian agencies in military operations
after the revolution. This future will be our fate, military discussions
of the revolution suggest, unless significant changes are made to a process
that is too cumbersome to be efficient and too unaware to be effective.
If the interagency process is not reformed, the revolution may come, but
knowledge and speed will be undone by ignorance and sloth.

The AAN report suggests ways to move from current interagency problems
to future success. The AAN report argues,

An entire network of effort is required in the future to achieve
interoperability with respect to planning, organization, communications,
standards, procedures, materiel, etc. An adequate physical and virtual
infrastructure for interagency planning, training, and readiness activities
should be established. . . . A long-term collaborative effort will be required
to establish the common doctrine, process, and infrastructure (physical
and virtual) needed for effective interagency training. Such an effort
may require the development of a National Interagency Training and Readiness
Center over the next decade or so.

More succinctly, but along the same lines, the standard briefing for
JV
2010 requested a "common operational picture; improved doctrine, training
and education, leader development programs" as well as other unspecified
repairs. The Joint Staff offers the network-centric linking of US government
agencies as an important part of the solution to interagency problems.
As the AAN report notes, improving the interagency process will place significant
demands on DOD resources and time, but the alternative will be a "dangerous
period of trial and error" when conflict comes.[7]

Is It Really Ignorance and Sloth?

Clearly, from the military perspective, the interagency is in bad shape.
But is this an accurate view? Two cases, countering the terrorism sponsored
by Libya's Muammar Qadaffi and ejecting one group of oligarchs from Haiti,
suggest that it is not entirely in bad shape and that the interagency in
its current form has strengths the military does not always recognize or
appreciate.

For over 25 years, the United States has pursued a variety of methods
to restrain Qadaffi. It imposed a growing list of sanctions, isolated him
diplomatically, bombed his country, and indicted his accomplices. None
of this was orchestrated by a centralized or integrated authority. Through
administrations of both parties and a constantly changing cast of agency
representatives, each method was applied, evaluated, and refined or abandoned
and another brought forward and tested through the work of a flat, flexible,
adaptive network of agencies. The same interagency process that failed
with regard to Panama worked with regard to Libya. Not only did it work,
but it worked because the interagency acted like a network, precisely the
kind of interagency that JV2010 hopes we will have someday
in the future.

The interagency also has worked under the demands of a crisis. Having
learned from the failures of Panama, largely at the urging of the Department
of Defense, the interagency put together a deliberate planning process
for Haiti. While the ultimate worth of the operation may be questioned,
there is little doubt that from the interagency perspective this operation
was better planned than Panama. Problems existed, but they were recognized
and dealt with. Perhaps the major reason this process worked, however,
was not that the interagency was allowed to operate as a network but that
its hierarchy was reinforced. Another layer, an Executive Committee, was
inserted into the interagency bureaucracy.

This brief review of these two cases suggests three things. It suggests
that the interagency process may not be as incompetent as the military
believes. It also suggests that neither increased networking, recommended
by the Joint Staff and others,[8] nor improved integration, also recommended
by the Joint Staff, is necessarily the way to improve the interagency process.
Networking worked against Libya, a more integrated hierarchy against the
oligarchs. Finally, it suggests that before we attempt to reform the interagency
process, we take a step back and make sure we understand what it is.

What is "the Interagency"?

To begin with, there are three characteristics of the interagency process
that must be kept in mind: it is a network disguised as a hierarchy; it
incorporates different decision modes and speeds; and it has horizontal
and vertical dimensions.

Network and Hierarchy

On paper, the interagency is a hierarchy. The President is at the top;
Cabinet officials preside below him in a Principals Committee; below the
Principals sits the next rung of their department or agency bureaucracies
in the Deputies Committee; below the Deputies, an Executive Committee sometimes
operates, composed of officials drawn from the next lower rank or two of
the bureaucracy; and below the Deputies or, if it exists, the Excom, interagency
working groups carry on, composed of officials drawn from the next levels
of the bureaucracy. In theory, direction and information flows down the
hierarchy and information and policy options ready for decision flow up.
In practice, however, there is very little that holds this hierarchy together.
Ultimately, only the President has authority, and he has competing priorities.

Beyond the most general policy orientations, which are sometimes given
at the top, issues are determined by a slowly established consensus. Participants
in the process consult with one another, other components of their agencies,
which may have different views, and often with Congress and outside experts,
who lobby the agencies. Slowly, agreement and coalitions build. Informal
personal contacts are important in all this; sometimes they are decisive.
On some issues, decisions are in effect made at the working group level
and only ratified, if noticed at all, by higher-ups.

The hierarchical structure of the interagency, then, has always been
more apparent than real. It becomes more real than apparent only when the
President focuses his attention on a problem or, what often amounts to
the same thing, when that problem assumes political significance for the
President. Since the number of issues that become politically significant
are few compared to the array of issues dealt with, the interagency is
for the most part a real network and an apparent hierarchy.

That the interagency process is both a hierarchy and a network may strike
some as an acute example of its incoherence. In fact, however, this dual
nature is an important source of strength, because neither hierarchical
nor network organization is necessarily always best. Each has strengths
and weaknesses, which makes each better or worse for different functions.
Figure 1 provides a rough guide to these strengths and weaknesses.[9]

x

Advantages

Disadvantages

Hierarchy

Speed
Decisiveness

Sclerosis
Long-term Risk

Network

Adaptability
Resilience

Uncontrollable
Short-term Risk

Figure 1. Hierarchy and Network
Advantages and Disadvantages.

Hierarchies can make decisions more quickly than networks because authority
is centralized. For the same reason, they can implement their decisions
more quickly and reliably. This means that they are better at managing
risk in the short term than more decentralized organizations, whose members
are free to respond to local conditions and thus are hard to guide through
difficulties. On the other hand, this freedom to respond makes decentralized
networks more sensitive, agile, and adaptive than hierarchies. The members
of a network can change individually to meet changing circumstances without
waiting for a headquarters to tell them what to do. If some of these changes
prove successful, then other members of the network may adopt them if they
fit their local circumstances. Such experimentation permits adaptation.
Such adaptation, in turn, means that networks tend to manage long-term
risk better than hierarchies.

As this summary of strengths and weaknesses makes clear, hierarchies
and networks are best suited for different activities. As the example of
Haiti suggests, a hierarchy may be best suited for crisis management, while,
as the campaign against Qadaffi implies, networks may be best for protracted
problems in changing environments. It would be best for our national security
if the interagency process maintained both of these organizational characteristics.

Different Decision Modes and Speeds

Thinking of the interagency process in terms of the different functions
that hierarchies and networks best perform draws our attention to the fact
that the interagency process consists of two different decision modes--crisis
management and long-term planning--that have different requirements and
occur at different speeds. The demands of crisis management do not allow
the deliberate pace of planning, just as the quick decisions of crisis
management would be inappropriate for planning, where the slow process
of consensus-building can allow new ideas to emerge and prepare the way
for effective implementation.

We can think of these different decisionmaking modes and speeds in terms
of our current national security strategy, which organizes our efforts
into three categories--shaping the world, responding to problems, and preparing
for the future. Shaping and preparing are long-term efforts. It is probably
best if the interagency's network character dominates in these activities.
This is so not only because these aspects of our strategy unfold slowly
but because the diversity of the world we live in and the rapidity with
which it seems to be changing call for an organization that permits flexible
and adaptive responses. Responding, on the other hand, because it most
often requires decisiveness and speed, is an activity in which the hierarchical
character of the interagency process should dominate. Efforts to reform
the interagency process must ensure that the different modes in which the
interagency operates are addressed.

Horizontal and Vertical Dimensions

Most discussions of interagency coordination talk about coordination
in either Washington or the field. This might be termed horizontal coordination.
But the interagency process also incorporates or should incorporate coordination
between Washington and the field. This vertical dimension is critical,
particularly when managing contingencies. Such vertical coordination is
most often thought of as Washington conveying clear direction to the field.
But it must also work the other way. Operational possibilities and costs
must be conveyed from the field to policymakers, because such considerations
should be weighed as policy is made. Those in the field are best positioned
to understand these possibilities and costs, and they should engage in
a dialogue with decisionmakers in Washington. All of the operations envisioned
in discussions of the RMA will require this kind of interaction.

The State Department's vision of future operations includes involving
its embassies in formulating policy.[10] This is a step in the right direction,
although there is no suggestion in State's vision that this involvement
will escape the stovepipe that connects embassies with the Department in
Washington. The military, on the other hand, has not accepted this vertical
dialogue, at least with civilians, as part of its future operational style.
Perhaps it believes that the speed of its operations will make such dialogue
impossible. If so, this belief contradicts the central contention of the
RMA that speed will be essential for effective operations. If operations
are too fast for coordination with policymakers, then they will be ineffective,
no matter how successful militarily, because they will unfold before policy
can properly shape them. Worse, operations may present policymakers with
faits accomplis, and thus determine policy. As it becomes clear that operations
have this character, decisionmakers may hesitate or fail to approve operations
or may seek ways to slow them down. This already happens when State fears
that DOD's planning threatens the flexibility necessary for diplomacy,
a fear noted in the Joint Staff memo cited above.[11]

In order to conduct successful operations, the military will need to
improve its ability to coordinate vertically. Perhaps the greatest obstacle
to such coordination, and for that matter to horizontal interagency coordination
as well, is the military's tendency to mask operational capabilities and
possibilities from civilian decisionmakers for fear that such knowledge
will encourage civilian meddling in operations. If the Joint Staff wants
to have effective, integrated, and unified operations in the future, this
inhibition will have to be overcome.

Some Questions to Answer, Some Traps to Avoid

The interagency process, much vilified, deserves careful study. Although
it has failed on occasion, it is not all bad. On the contrary, it has proven
itself flexible, adaptive, and decisive. It was a network before networks
were cool, and it has successfully handled hundreds of crises from noncombatant
evacuations to war. Because it is both a hierarchy and a network, understanding
how it works might even shed some light on how the military might organize
its revolutionized forces, which will have to combine both organizational
characteristics. If this is too much to hope for, studying the interagency
process may at least allow DOD and other agencies to develop a more efficient
and effective working relationship, so that the United States, its people,
and the other agencies of their government can benefit fully from revolutionized
military forces.

Study of the interagency should answer a number of questions. For example,
if it is true that the interagency process has the three characteristics
distinguished above (a claim requiring further scrutiny), we should ask
how we can maximize the advantages and minimize the disadvantages of the
interagency's network and hierarchical character. How can we make either
network or hierarchical characteristics dominant? Can the communication
revolution improve the interagency process in Washington, in the field,
and between the two? If the RMA forces initiative to lower echelons, can
and should the interagency allow greater initiative to the field? In which
activities and operations and to what extent? Should we allow such devolution
of policymaking authority? Would it be compatible with the accountability
we expect? How would this affect congressional oversight? Should we think
in terms of an expeditionary model, where general guidelines are set in
Washington but adaptation and implementation are left to the field, or
in terms of real-time control exercised from Washington and made increasingly
effective through improving communications? Can the interagency community
in Washington have the knowledge and experience to exercise real-time control?
If the State Department involves Ambassadors in the formulation of policy,
would this change how CINCs and their staffs work with Ambassadors and
their staffs? In answering these questions, we should remember that the
military and interagency need not always exercise the same degree of centralization.
For example, the need for greater control of dispersed fire support may
actually mean that after the revolution some military operations will be
more centralized than they are now.[12] The interagency support for such
operations may or may not need to be as centrally controlled.

In addressing these and other questions, there are a number of traps
that experience with the interagency process suggests we should avoid both
now and as we work to integrate revolutionized forces into the interagency
process. When the military discusses the interagency, there is a tendency
to see interagency problems as analogous to problems between the services.
It is suggested, for example, that just as jointness has replaced service
rivalries, so can interagency coordination replace interagency squabbling.
The problem with this analogy is that military officers from different
services have much more in common than do representatives from different
agencies. Compared to the differences between, say, a CIA case officer
and a State Department Foreign Service Officer, the differences between
an Army officer and a Marine Corps officer are negligible with respect
to "culture, bias, misperceptions, unique perspectives," and respect for
hierarchy. This means that whatever interagency coordination may be, if
it is achieved, it will be unlike what the military has experienced as
jointness.

Not only will interagency coordination and jointness be different, they
should be. It would be a fatal error to seek interagency coordination by
centralizing or homogenizing the interagency process by, for example, creating
an interagency national security civil service, establishing interagency
"czars," especially if they have budget authority, or pushing for too much
unity and integration. Because their functions are different, military
officers, spies, diplomats, and lawyers see problems and their solutions
differently. Not one of these different approaches is expendable. To succeed,
the US government needs them all and needs vigorous advocates for each.
The best way to increase interagency coordination will be the one that
promotes coordination while respecting these differences and enhancing
their forceful expression.

In seeking models for effective coordination that do not overwhelm agency
differences, we should consider the interagency effort to combat terrorism.
In this case, a small group, a kind of standing Executive Committee, was
critical in extracting maximum effectiveness from agency differences. Coupled
with the success of more ad hoc Executive Committees, the example of the
small counterterrorism group may lead us to think that such small groups
are the best way to ensure effective interagency coordination. Such groups
do have virtues. A small group of experts, focused on a single issue, meeting
frequently enough to develop cohesion and trust, especially if membership
remains stable, is likely to be more effective than a large interagency
working group that meets infrequently and whose members are responsible
for a number of different issues. While small standing groups can be effective,
however, they cannot be more than a limited solution to problems of interagency
coordination because the critical ingredient of their success is in limited
supply. The success of the counterterrorism group varies in direct relation
to the support each member of this group enjoys from his Cabinet-level
superior. In the mid to late 1980s, for example, this support was high
and gave the members of the counterterrorism group clout individually in
their agencies and collectively in the interagency. Since the time of senior
officials is so limited compared to the number of issues they must contend
with, a small-group approach to interagency coordination cannot be used
for more than a few issues. Small groups may improve coordination on these
issues, but they are not a device that will improve interagency coordination
generally.

The military and other operational agencies (the CIA and the FBI) may
favor keeping interagency groups small in hopes that this will allow the
speedy decisionmaking and security that operations require. It would be
a mistake, however, to focus only on the speed of decisionmaking or the
need for security. If interagency groups are too small, this may impede
the full coordination necessary for success. Crisis may justify a bias
for speed, but crisis decisionmaking is only one mode of interagency activity.
Even crisis decisionmaking may prove to be different depending on the kind
of crisis. Some crises--say, a developing complex contingency operation
involving the United Nations and a regional political or military alliance
as well as the interagency--may well require a slow decisionmaking process.
For the shaping and preparing aspects of our strategy, which are essentially
planning exercises, speed will be much less important. In structuring interagency
working groups, judgments will have to be made on individual cases, weighing
the relative importance of speed, security, and inclusiveness.

Perhaps because of the military bias in favor of speed, military discussions
of the interagency process tend to emphasize procedural fixes and technology.
As noted above, the AAN report speaks of "low technical and procedural
interoperability" as a problem, while JV2020 laments that
the interagency process lacks "extensive liaison cells" and "integrative
technology." Such technical and procedural fixes will be useful, but perhaps
most fully in implementing rather than in making interagency decisions,
and in permitting effective horizontal and vertical interagency operational
dialogue. Such fixes will be less useful in making decisions because in
this case the critical issue is building consensus. Technological and procedural
fixes are likely to be limited in their ability to speed up this essentially
political process. In this case, therefore, from the military's point of
view, the critical element will remain the political skill of the Secretary
of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the senior
members of their staffs.

As the military is inclined to focus on procedures and technology to
fix the interagency, civilians may be inclined to look to ideas drawn from
management studies of successful corporations. Something might be learned
from such studies, but since the profit motive of commercial enterprises
is so essentially different from the purpose of the interagency, the utility
of corporate management ideas is likely to be limited. For example, many
corporations have tried to push decisionmaking down to the level where
information is gathered. If efficiency were the goal, this might be a good
model for a governmental bureaucracy. Ambassadors, for example, would be
given more decisionmaking authority. But efficiency is not the primary
purpose of a governmental bureaucracy. To improve the interagency process,
it may be more useful to consider ideas drawn not from commercial practice
but from organizations in which the usual incentives do not apply. The
study of complex adaptive systems or principal-agent relationships may
be relevant.

Whether we look to technology, procedures, recent developments in organizational
theory, or other ways to solve interagency coordination problems, we probably
should not think there will be one or even just two or three solutions.
Given the diversity of the interagency and the activities it undertakes,
as well as the uncertain and changing world we inhabit, it would be wise
to encourage a decentralized experimental approach to improving the interagency.
We should permit the development and implementation of a number of different
solutions. In keeping with this spirit, we should resist the temptation
to implement a massive structural reorganization, a new National Security
Act to update the system put in place in 1947.[13] It would be better to
build on the flexibility and adaptability we currently possess. This approach
would place the responsibility for reform with the individual agencies,
limiting the National Security Council staff to the role of a coordinator.

Finally, while the Defense Department, with its operational and long-term
focus, may feel more urgency about improving the interagency process than
other agencies do, it should proceed carefully. It should remember the
practitioner's ready grasp of agency differences expressed almost 40 years
ago in the Joint Staff memorandum. At the same time, it will have to overcome
the prejudice of that memorandum, expressed in the emphasis on DOD's strength--systematic
planning--and the claim that coordination will improve when other
agencies overcome their inhibitions. In this regard, DOD should
recognize that if it wants to lead the way to better coordination, it will
have to explain how that coordination benefits other agencies and not simply
why its revolutionized forces require it.

2.US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), Knowledge
and Speed: Battle Force and the U.S. Army of 2025, The 1998 Annual
Report on The Army After Next Project to the Chief of Staff of the Army
(Fort Monroe, Va.: TRADOC, 1998), p. 8; Joint Vision 2010 Standard
Briefing, Part Three, Slide Three, Internet, http://www.dtic.mil/jv2010/briefings.htm,
accessed 5 June 2000; Joint Vision 2020, p. 18, Internet, http://www.dtic.mil/jv2020/jvpub2.htm,
accessed 25 July 2000.

3. TRADOC, Knowledge and Speed, p. 11.

4. "General Says U.S. Has Learned from Grenada Mistakes,"
The Washington
Times, 11 August 1994,p. 8.

5. TRADOC, Knowledge and Speed, pp. 2, 8.

6. For the failure to coordinate before Operation Just Cause, see Robert
Pear and Neil A. Lewis, "The Noriega Fiasco: What Went Wrong,"
The New
York Times, 30 May 1988, p. 1; and Rebecca Grant, Operation JUST
CAUSE and the U.S. Policy Process (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1991).
For the failure to coordinate the transition to civil administration, see
Richard H. Shultz, Jr., In the Aftermath of War, US Support for Reconstruction
and Nation-Building in Panama Following Just Cause (Maxwell AFB, Ala.:
Air Univ. Press, August 1993).

11. The planning that lead to the dispatch of the Harlan County
to Haiti was marred by a lack of coordination between State and DOD. Both
agencies bear responsibility for this, but State's failure to coordinate
with DOD appears to have been motivated in part by fear that DOD's planning
process would establish timetables and requirements that would limit the
flexibility that State felt its diplomats needed to make the Governor's
Island Agreement work.

12. Fukuyama and Shulsky, pp. 51-53.

13. For a description of proposals to update the 1947 act, see Paul
Mann, "Info Technologies and National Security Doctrine," Aviation Week
and Space Technology, 23 November 1998, pp. 51-54.

Dr. David Tucker is a Visiting Associate Professor in the Special Operations
Academic Group at the Naval Postgraduate School. He previously served in
the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity
Conflict and as a Foreign Service Officer in Africa and Europe. He holds
the Ph.D. from the Claremont Graduate School. His publications include
"Combating International Terrorism," US Air Force Academy, Institute for
National Security Studies (forthcoming); Skirmishes at the Edge of Empire,
the United States and International Terrorism (Praeger, 1997); "Fighting
Barbarians," Parameters (Summer 1998); and "Responding to Terrorism,"
Washington Quarterly (Winter 1998).